Online Exam Software That Survives a Bad Connection
Students answer, and every answer is saved as they go. A dropped signal, a closed lid, or a flat battery costs them the minutes they were away — never the paper they had already written.
No credit card required · Students need no account
The Sitting Everyone Remembers Is the One That Was Lost
Every school that has run an online exam has the same story: a student two thirds of the way through, a connection that dropped, and an hour of work that was never written down anywhere. QuestionForge saves each answer as it is given and keeps a copy in the browser besides, so a student who goes offline carries on answering and their work is replayed the moment they reconnect. The countdown is held on our server rather than in the page, so refreshing cannot buy more time and a wrong clock on a school laptop cannot take any away.
How an Online Exam Runs
Build the paper
Pick questions from your banks, or set a pool and let every student draw a different paper of the same length and weight.
Set the window
Opening and closing dates, a time limit, and — where you need it — school hours only, in your own time zone.
Send them in
Share a link and an access code, or let students launch straight from Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard or Brightspace.
Watch and mark
See who is sitting right now, grant extra time mid-exam, and get objective questions graded the moment a paper is handed in.
What Makes a Sitting Hold Together
- Nothing is lost when the network is
Answers save as they are given and queue locally when the connection goes. The student can see that their work is safe, and the queue is replayed automatically once they are back.
- A clock that cannot be argued with
The deadline lives on the server and the time remaining is computed there. Refreshing the page, changing the device clock, or returning on a different laptop all leave the countdown exactly where it was.
- A different paper for every student
Draw questions per attempt from a pool — five multiple choice and two essays, each drawn separately — so a bank of a hundred stops being an exam of ten. Question and option order can be shuffled independently.
- Accommodations that actually apply
Extra time as a percentage or a flat number of minutes, extra attempts, or a different window, granted per student. They apply automatically when that student starts, and every grant is recorded with who made it and when.
- Retakes, under a policy you choose
Allow several attempts and decide which one counts — highest, latest, first, or the average. The gradebook download gives you one row per student under the policy you set, with every sitting still available for an appeal.
- Corrections that reach the papers already marked
Fix a wrong answer key after the exam and re-grade: every affected result is recalculated, rather than leaving you to find them by hand.
- Versions, so a published paper is never edited underneath a class
Publishing locks an exam. Changing it makes a new version with its own link and its own results, and publishing that one offers to close the version it supersedes.
- A timetable you can print
Exams are stored as windows; the timetable expands them into days, so the school office can see what is sittable on Tuesday without opening every exam in turn.
Who Runs Exams This Way
Schools & Districts
Term assessments on managed Chromebooks, with school-hours-only windows and per-student accommodations.
Universities
Large cohorts sitting from anywhere, launched from the LMS with marks passed straight back to the gradebook.
Training Providers
Certification and competency tests with pass marks, retake policies, and a record of every sitting.
Departments & Faculties
One exam authored once and deployed to every section, each class keeping its own link and its own results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if a student loses their internet connection mid-exam?
They keep answering. Answers are held in the browser while the connection is down and sent as soon as it returns, and the student is shown whether their work is saved. If they close the page entirely, reopening the link puts them back on the question they were on, with everything they had already answered still there.
Can a student get more time by refreshing the page?
No. The deadline is stored on the server and the time remaining is calculated there, so the countdown resumes exactly where it was. The same applies if they change their device clock or move to another computer.
Do students need an account?
No. A published exam has a link and an eight-character access code; a student enters their name and sits it. Students launching from an LMS are identified by the LMS instead. Accounts are for the people writing exams, not the people sitting them.
Can every student get a different set of questions?
Yes. Turn on per-attempt drawing and each student draws their own paper from the pool when they start. Every draw is honoured separately, so "five multiple choice and two essays" gives exactly that, and every paper is worth the same total.
Is this a locked-down or proctored exam environment?
No, and we will not tell you otherwise. You can require an access password, restrict which network addresses may start the exam, ask for a full-screen sitting, and block copy and paste — and interruptions are timestamped and shown to you. But a web page cannot stop someone opening a book or picking up a phone, so treat this as deterrence and a record for a supervised room, not as a replacement for supervision or for a dedicated proctoring service.
What happens to a student still working when the exam closes?
Their sitting is submitted and graded automatically at the deadline, so nothing is left hanging. A teacher can grant an individual extension before that point, and can re-open a sitting afterwards if something went wrong.
Can I run the same exam across several classes?
Yes. Author it once as a master exam and deploy it to each course. Every class gets its own copy with its own access code, attempts and results, and you can push a correction to all of them — copies where a teacher has made a local change, or where students have already sat, are skipped and reported rather than overwritten silently.
How are exams graded?
Multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank and short answer are graded automatically the moment a paper is submitted. Essays go to a marking screen, with AI-assisted grading available to draft a mark and a comment for you to accept or change.
Run Your Next Exam Online
Build it from your question banks, send a link, and let the marking take care of itself. Free to start, and no credit card required.
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